Turkey adds to its critical deficit of military pilots
As Turkey's military pilot shortage worsens, the government is ordering former pilots back into service on short notice.
Even as Turkey is urgently trying to fix its self-inflicted shortage of military pilots, the government dismissed 25 more. It then issued a state of emergency decree to force its former aviators to leave lucrative jobs in the private sector and return to service.
Turkey's air force was the hardest-hit military branch in the mass purges that followed the July 2016 failed coup. I noted in an article a year ago that the air force would need at least two years to make up for the pilot deficiency it was facing.
With the latest expulsions that were issued Aug. 25, Turkey dropped well below the globally accepted ratio of 1.5 pilots per plane, reaching 0.7 per plane. The discharged pilots were highly experienced veterans.
Turkey has 320 combat planes (of which 240 are F-16s), 90 transport planes, seven tankers and 105 training planes. During the first three months after the 2016 uprising, the ratio had already gone down to 0.9 per plane. The situation now is more serious: In some squadrons, the number of F-16 pilots has reached 0.6 for each plane. Moreover, because of growing operational missions and crew shortages, pilots are now flying twice the number of hours they used to before the coup attempt.
